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Comment by wmf | Hacker News Reader

I get the impression that social media douchebags already pivoted Twitter in that direction a few years ago, and now Twitter is just confirming it. The sad part IMO is that it seems like they could fix their developer relations problems and their business model by charging to send relevant tweets to existing followers, not unrelated ads. Of course, I don’t even use Twitter so you probably shouldn’t ask me.

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You would be correct actually. If anything Twitter pivoted over a year ago.

I wrote my thoughts on this subject here in my post titled, Twitter Isn't Pivoting, It's Already A Media Company http://www.besttechie.com/2012/11/16/twitter-isnt-pivoting/

True, but the root problem is in education. Our schools are passing out "social media douchebag" degrees left and right - we can expect nothing less.

This is only partially tongue-in-cheek. The balance of information systems operate on trust, just as economies do, and eroding trust at the institutional level is a bad sign.

As much as I like to make fun of the douchebags, I have to admit that there is some merit to the idea of Twitter as an opt-in marketing channel or a character-limited version of Google Reader — at least those use case are useful to some people. The original Twitter, although authentically social, ranged from boring (I don't care what you had for lunch) to frustrating (you can't have any meaningful discussion in 140-character chunks).

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